Posted on 02/09/2005 6:37:29 PM PST by SamAdams76
Last week, espn.com, the Internet site for all-sports TV station ESPN, asked its American subscribers to weigh in on the NHL lockout. "Do you care that the NHL is expected to cancel the 2004-05 season?" they asked.
Of the 146,514 responses, 73% said "No."
Given what we north of the border have been surmising over the past few months, that percentage is not terribly surprising. Hockey coverage in the States is as hard to find as cricket coverage in Canada. It's a boutique sport at best.
What is surprising is that many actually responded. Were they giving away free cars?
We in Canada love and care about hockey in a way unmatched around the globe, but I'm starting to doubt if Canadians care as deeply as we think about the current labour dispute. Given his or her druthers, every hockey fan in this country obviously would choose to have the NHL back on ice and back on our TV sets. But in light of the equally obvious fact that it's not going to happen anytime soon, I am sensing little in the way of passionate outrage that you might expect of a people deprived of their game.
Lockout conversations tend to peter out after a minute or two, simply because there's not a lot to say. Once you get past "Are they coming back?" and the obligatory negative response, talk turns to more urgent matters, like the price of kids' sticks.
So, what in the name of Gordie Howe is going on here? It certainly isn't that we don't care, because down deep we do.
My own belief is that in an age of unfathomable player riches, not to mention ticket prices, the public has disconnected itself from the people who play and run the game.
Trevor Linden may expect us working stiffs to appreciate the principle behind his association's stalwart refusal to accept a cap on their salaries that would reduce the average salary from $1.8 million US to $1.3 million, but the truth is nobody I know can relate to such thinking.
If you can believe the industry numbers, there is a $2 billion pie (shrinking with each passing day) to be divided. How can such an economic reality get lost in the semantics of "salary cap" and "linkage" and "cost certainty."
For heaven's sake, at $1 million a year a middle-of-the road NHLer will gross more in two seasons than about 90% of the population earns in 40 years of working.
In the realm of professional athletics, hockey players have managed in general to maintain their image as "real" people; good guys, humble and as well-grounded as the small towns where so many are from. But in recent years, it has gotten so that the only people who can afford to go to watch them play are rich and well-connected themselves.
Because it's hockey and because it's Canada, folks will cheer for the sweater (whenever that sweater reappears). They will pine quietly for the game they love but care little for the "plight" of the millionaires who play it and the billionaires who own the teams.
As this charade of a negotiation drags on yet another week, each side rooted to the same patch of ground it occupied two years ago, the players and owners will continue to wage their little war through the media for the hearts and minds of the people in the street.
As far as we can tell, though, those hearts and minds already have moved on.
I think that part of the talk about a salary cap should include a minimum salary cap level as well. The reason some of the MLB teams are so bad is that they actually spend less on the payroll of the entire team then the amount the league gives them in revenue sharing.
I go to hockey games all the time. Manchester has the Monarchs and the UNH Wildcats are great. We beat Maine last Saturday.
I appreciate your belated legwork on your rather shaky premise.
Your belief in the beneficence of a hard salary cap boils down to a ten year period in the NFL that provides little hard evidence of such a preposterous claim.
You salt your hypotheses with words like "...were by and large correct...", "...over and over the(y) tended to win..." and other such fuzzy foundational statements, followed by absolute concluding statements like "...the only teams that could afford ...", and "...true free agency and no cap is the era of dynasties...".
Now, I don't mind someone searching out facts to back up their preconceived ideas, but the facts should be sturdier than this if you're going to make baldly absolute statements about cause and effect.
In the miniscule slice of NFL time upon which you've hung your 'theory', 1984 to 1995, you had SIX different teams (Los Angeles Raiders (unless you're discounting the 1984 Superbowl), Wash., NY Giants, Chicago Bears, San Fran, and Dallas). Of those, San Fran and Dallas are hardly the population meccas of NY, LA and Chicago fame. If size of market were the critical dimension of success, where were the NY Jets and the LA Rams? Certainly no lack of money in those cities, was there?
So it boils down to a perception that you have that free agency was a demon to be exorcised based on the extremely tenuous proposition that because the Giants won 2 in 5 years, the Redskins won 2 in 5 years, the Bears won 1, and two smaller market teams (SF and Dallas) won 3 in 6 and 2 in a row, respectively.
Based on this flimsy logic, a great case can be made that the NE Patriots are proof that the current hard salary cap promotes the status quo. They have, after all won more Superbowls in 4 years than any team other than Dallas (3 wins in 4 years, too).
Face it. You're unable to support this hard cap lunacy with anything even remotely looking like hard data.
Just because you believe it, doesn't make it so.
BTW, the reason that the NBA is now not "officially" a hard cap (I wonder who made that "official" decision anyhow) is because it was so problematic that the league started creating exceptions to make it workable.
If it didn't work in the NBA, why impose it on the NHL? The problem in the NHL is that the owners are completely incapable of controlling their checkbooks. "Please, stop us from writing more checks. Please!"
They get no sympathy from me, especially when Tampa and Calgary show up in the Finals last year (with marginal salaries paid to their Cup-hungry players).
There's nothing fuzzy about it. When free agency was unabated 4 teams ruled the NFL with the loan exception being the year's Chicago's 46 ruled. 4 teams split 11 Super Bowls over a 12 year period because there was no cap and the rest of the league couldn't afford to compete with them. It's nbt fuzzy at all, I'm basing my argument exactly on what Rozelle and Rooney did, it's the argument they used to seel the cap to the owners and players, sorry if you don't like it but you not liking it doesn't make it fuzzy.
It's not a miniscule slice of time, it's over 1/4 of the entire post merger history of the NFL. SF and Dallas were top 10 media cities when judging by the population local channels reach, and Dallas thanks to their America's Team monicer has always excelled in memorabelia sales usually being the #1 team in that department rarely if ever sinking below #3, that adds money which they spent on athletes which gave them the last powerhouse team of the dynasty era.
No I don't think free agency was a demon at all. The problem isn't free agency, it's how some owners HANDLE free agency. Look no further than the New York Rangers to see how some owners will just throw money at players, this alters the financial landscape of a league and makes it much more difficult to compete. The year the Dallas Stars won the Cup they had 6 players making more than Troy Aikman did on his most lucrative contract with the Cowboys, now given the relative revenues generated by each team and the over all personal fame do you really think the Stars had 6 players that had earned more money than a 3 time Super Bowl winning QB? Salaries have gotten out of hand in the NHL, too many teams simply can't afford to compete because too many other teams view their bank account as a bottomless pit, since these teams are franchises of the league and should exist to help each other earn revenue something needs to be done. McDonald's corporate wouldn't tolerate one franchise overbiding another and taking all their good employees because they understand it's bad for the chain as a whole, the NFL realized the same thing and instituted the salary cap for the betterment of the league, and the bottom line statements show they did the right thing.
There's no flimsy logic in there at all, and your need to resort to insults proves it. People who know their logic can hold can do so without insults, I haven't insulted you, do the world a kindness and return to polite discourse.
SF and Dallas were NOT small market teams. They weren't top 5 but they were top 10, and more importantly larger markets than most of the AFC teams except the Raiders and Jets in that time period. That was the focus of the AFL when it came about, small market areas, and freeform free agency beat the snot out of the AFC. Not all large market teams succeeded because not all owners and GMs spend money wisely, again look no further than the Rangers whose salary for the past 5 years has exceeded the NFL salary cap every year (with half the players, think about it).
The Pats have succeeded because the cracked the code of the salary cap. They don't over pay for players, they don't defer salary (which is the trap that killed Dallas and Denver and is still killing the Niners, defering salary is not a good idea in any sport and it's really dumb in a hard cap system), they have a smart coach with flexible game plans, and they look for smart players that can handle changing roles. But the system still works, notice they haven't won with blow outs, and the year they didn't win the SB they didn't even break 500. The salary cap was the last step in Rozelle's dream, it started with the draft system that allows the worst teams to get the best players out of college, he wanted an any given Sunday league, total parity where there's no way you could predict on Sep 1 who's going to win the SB.
Every site that discussed the NBA salary cap says it's a soft cap. Their cap didn't work for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that the fundamentals have dropped out of the game making it stink as a whole. Also the significantly smaller team sizes make it still very easy to overpower other teams with talent, if the talented players are willing to do stuff like pass the ball and practice their free throws.
It's not "please stop us from writing more check", it's "stop that owner over there from pricing us out of the market for skilled players".
Notice Tampa had been slowly building their team over time and was focusing on a team concept not unlike the Pats, it's not impossible for an inexpensive team to succeed in the NHL, but it's damn hard. And Calgary, like all the other Canadian teams, benefited from the Rangers fire sale, and Calgary also knew they were going to lose most of their big players in the next season because they simply can't afford to keep them. And that's the problem with unbridled free agency and crazy owners, small market teams can build to greatness but they can't afford to keep it. And any company using the franchise model that allow one group of franchises to dismantle others is doomed to failure.
Now, that was a significant, and reasoned argument.
It still boils down to one thing. Control of the owner's profligate spending.
If the Rangers, or any other club, were a major problem for the other owners, then deal with him/her in the "owner's club" like gentleman, and gentlewomen. Why penalize the players with an onerous salary cap just because the owners can't discipline their own clubmembers?
Also, of course, I apologize if my words came across as harsh or insulting. I'm obviously an advocate for the players, and not overly impressed with the current crop of owners or the commissioner. but, it was not my intent to let my passions be a burden to you.
Thanks for the discussion. I've got to run now, to see my daughter's basketball game (now there's REAL excitement)!
I hope to touch bases with you again some day.
It doesn't penalize the players, salary caps aren't onerous, the current NFL salary cap averages out to about 1.25 million dollars per player, that's not too shabby, and only part of the signing bonus and performance based insentives count against the cap. Everybody's salary has climbed very nicely under the cap, all it really does is keep one team from having a bunch of $8 million players but with 32 teams there's still plenty of room in the league for $8 million players. This system also gives teams a choice, they can load the team with flashy players that make hilight footage and put seats in chairs, or they can bargain hard and work for balance and go for the statue crap shoot; they can try to be Indianapolis or New England and it's all the owner's decision, personally I have no respect for the Indy choice I think if you're going to own a sports team you should be gunning for a championship. But I'll never have that kind of money so I guess my opinion doesn't count.
The NFL really isn't into dealing harshly with owners, not like the MLB has been lately, if they were Al Davis and Georgia Frontiere would be slipping with the fishes at least proverbially (and in Georgia's case maybe more so, 3 time widows need to be dealt with permanently, I bet Tagliabeau was scared out of his wits giving her a ring). And constantly punishing owners after the fact doesn't create balance now, and that was always Pete's goal, from the first day he took charge of the NFL before there even was an AFL he wanted an any given Sunday league, no powerhouses, even playing field, totally unpredictable. Pete had a vision and lived long enough to see most of it realized, maybe I'm just an old romantic but I dig Pete's vision, I like that most of the regular season and all of the post season is on broadcast TV not cable, I like that the Super Bowl has become a national holiday, I like how much NFL slang has entered into our language, and I love the fact that I have no freaking idea who'll be playing in Detroit in the deep of next winter.
I'm with you on owners, there's a solid dozen I think should be run out of town on the rail. But I think Paul's OK, I mean he's no Pete Rozelle but who is, I don't think any sport has ever been blessed with his like before and we're not likely to see another like him in our lifetime; and I like the fact that he's tried to stick with Pete's vision. My only real gripe with Paul is that Sunday Ticket is only on DirectTV, I don't think that's financially smart and I think it breaks some of Pete's vision.
Apology fully accepted and I'll apologize back, I'm not always the nicest guy in the world even when I don't mean to be rude and probably popped on you harder than I meant to.
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